I tend to tell people that are in just for the Mission Rewards - let it be Conquest or Fragments - to just chill at the spawn and don't self-destruct in Death Match. I won't kick people with a K/D-ratio of 0. The people having a 0-9 K/D are the ones I'm upset about. If you aren't contributing in Death Match, you're not doing any harm. No reason to kick you out.

Powertech Shield Tech. It's the most straightforward tanking spec. You got no nasty resource management (hello Juggs!) and almost all of your Global Cooldowns are helping against everything, so you don't have to pop the right one for the right situation. Imagine different weather scenarios. As Jugg and Asa you often got to chose if you want a raincoat, lose clothes or a winter jacket. Powertechs always got an Umbrella, semi warm clothes and shoes were your feet won't get wet, so you should be pretty good in any weather scenarior. You're not left standing in the rain with your pants down like Sins and Juggs sometimes do. I've mixed the metaphors here, but I think you get the gist.

That is not necessarily correct. Ranged DPS often have casts or channels in their best rotation, while most Melee DPS don't. Let's say for example Grob'thok, since all players interested in Operations should be familiar with that fight: As a Melee DPS, you don't ever lose uptime. If you have the fire-thingy, you can just dance around the boss and continue with your rotation. As a ranged DPS, you have to play very smartly to not lose DPS - fire tends to kill faster with increasing difficulty. In Storymode, you can probably get through every cast and move when you do your instants - in VM and MM it's harder and you will most certainly lose uptime in favor of surviving. No doubt that range is an advantage in some cases - but in some cases, casts and channels are disadvantages. So I wouldn't categorically say that Ranged DPS have a better chance at maintaining uptime. To compensate that, we've gotten all sorts of Movement Abilities over the years: Mad Dash for Juggernauts and Marauders, Charge for Powertechs, Phantom Stride and Holotraverse for Assassins and Scoundrels. Back when the aforementioned Grobthok was released, Marauders even still had to use their stacks to use Predation if I remember correctly. This problem is being addressed. Now Melee DPS have AoE Damage Reduction, while RDPS don't. So it's handle in two ways now. We don't really need it to be handled in three different ways at the same time. Nowadays, most people want to play MDPS because the difference in damage and survivability is so large and on the highest level, skill makes the uptime issue you mentioned almost meaningless.

On current balance, I downed all Master Mode Operations aside from God of the Machine and Apex Predator - and those for a lack of trying and not because I failed - with a Commando/Mercenary DPS. Whoever is telling you that Commando DPS is not doing enough DPS doesn't know what he's talking about. However, it is true that with current balance, Melee DPS are doing more DPS on average. Among the Commando Combat Styles, Assault Specialist is performing better than Gunnery. AS is a bit harder to play and has a more difficult resource management. Nevertheless, Gunnery is, if played well, doing more than enough Damage to defeat any Veteran Mode Operation content and most Master Mod Operation encounters. This to be said, it is easier to monkey around on a Marauder or a Powertech and do more damage without knowing what you're doing (been there, done that), as it is with a Commando. But on the other hand, it's easier to learn Gunnery and be decent with it than most other classes. And AS is not that hard to learn either. And if nothing pans out, you can always play Heal. Commando Heal is the easiest and most stable Heal these days in my opinion.

I've not done Nahut for quite some time - I came back from a long break just recently. But didn't Failure kill Nahut before the Gear-hike to 340? With that new equipment and the relic-buff shouldn't it be possible to play it regularly with 4 DPS and 2 Tanks? Playing completely without rebounder is obviously an entirely different thing. But having one or two rebounders on demand is different than planning to do one for every slice. Back in the day we still often had shroud and if not, at least one other damage-reducing DCD ready for that. But I don't want to judge that strategy before I haven't seen Nahut myself.

So, first of all, I don't want this to be a "I'm whining about my main class being nerfed"-thread. I'd like to bring up valuable feedback and suggestions for how things could improve. Needless to say that Tanks are currently in a pretty decent spot. I mained Kinetic Combat/Darkness since 4.0 and cleared all Raidcontent with that class. We all know that the spec was pretty OP for quite some time - double stance, force speed, aoe-damage reduction. The defining aspect of that spec was, for me, always the ability to counter high damage spikes with the various specific DCD's. I did deep dives into the combat logs to figure out timings for certain damage spikes in order to use those DCD's to avoid them. Powertechs always had a concept very different from Shadows. They had comparably high base-armor and damage reduction and long, generalized DCD's. Both Fuel and Energy Shield did a good job against everything. Additionally, Powertechs fielded decent Tank-DPS and were often preferred in fights without any major damage spikes, but where more DPS would enable the group to avoid a lot of incoming damage. Guardian/Juggernaut Tanks have, for me, always filled a place in between. They had fewer abilities to take spikes than Shadows/Assassins, but more than Powertechs/Vanguards. They also did decent DPS (most among all three Tank specs right now as I understand). But I have to admit that they never were a viable option for me, simply because they could do everything good, but nothing great, unlike the other two Tank-specs. However, with late 6.0 and now 7.x, Shadows have lost their uniqueness in spike-mitigation. Powertechs/Vanguards can now make use of a legendary, adding a 3-second 1,3m damage absorb shield to their Energy Yield. They became viable in places where they've been nothing more than a meme before (Brontes NiM comes to mind). In my opinion, that is completely fine from a certain point of view. In my opinion however, one Tank-class should not be better in almost all things than others. Powertechs right now field the most raid utility (Rebounder), the best mobility (long hydraulics right from the assembly line), great DPS and finally great spike resistance with Energy Yield. Meanwhile, Shadows have even lost their last unique raid utility, the stealth rez. I have to admit that I rerolled to PT/VG in most boss fights, because it is simply the better tank now. But as mentioned above, that is not necessarily bad. Shadows had a long time where they were on top. Powertechs deserve to be on top now. What I am suggesting is, to again give the tank classes some kind of uniqueness, making them superior to the other two classes in at least one department. As I understand it, Juggernauts/Guardians do the most DPS right now, that is fine. Powertechs/Vanguards are the most stable tanks right now, giving the best raid utility with sonic rebounder. The niche I would suggest for the shadow is mobility: We already have decent mobility skills with force speed and Phantom Stride. As an addition I would suggest to bring back a long lost ability that I'm still mourning for to this day: The Phase Walk. Boss positioning is as important as mitigation in this game. Phase Walk would enable Shadows and Assassins to get a clear edge over the other tank specs in that department, while not making it completely overpowered or taking away from the other tank specs in what they excel in. In addition, I would change the Shadow Tank Legendary, that grants knockback-immunity on deflection to grant knockback-immunity on phase walk instead, making it a bit more useful as well. I have to admit that I've never played Ranked PvP in a professional or semi-professional manner, so I'm unable to think of the implications of that change in that area. I'd like to hear thoughts on that. I can see a problem with Shadow Tanks porting themselves 60 meters away when they're on 10% HP to avoid dying - but a simple fix on not being able to use Phase Walk while being stunned or rooted could address that problem in my opinion.

As someone who killed Nahut the regular way back when it was new content... It is not that hard. People will adapt and the groups on the top will still clear everything. It's just that we go the route of least resistance. Why should we field DPS with low sustained DPS and - for the specific encounter - no helpful raid utility if we can do otherwise? Completely unrelated to that: I think, with the Boss HP and Damage nerf a few months ago, the Gear level hike and the relics proc fix, it should be possible to kill all bosses with all classes, given that the other 7 people in the group play the best possible option. But one thing is for sure: If you raid twice a week in a regular hardmare group (the group being on the edge between hardmode and nightmare), you pretty much won't be able to clear everything with your set class if that class is not FOTM. You will miss practice, experience and the raid environment required to kill those high-end bosses. And that leads to a very simple thing: You're not good enough. People should stop whining to Bioware about not being able to kill content when the reason is sitting in front of their own screen.

They discovered problems while implementing the update? It's likely the issue was discovered a bit earlier and worked it's way up and down the chain of command in order to determine how much longer it will take and how certain the guys are in fixing that problem. And, as usual in the field of game development and coding in general, if there is a problem that can, if all things work out, be fixed within 1 hour, they guys actually fixing the problem usually give an inflated estimate of 5 hours to their boss in order to cover their bases in case anything goes wrong.

I can understand the balancing decisions from a certain point of view. AP, Lightning and Madness are very very very easy. I've recently rejoined my old raiding group (that I took a break from, as well as from the game) and we were going into the new raid for me to get clear XP and equipment. I just went in there with an AP PT. Not to get out the big numbers, but do do the mechanics right while not having to worry about my rotation. I can play AP without looking and so can probably everybody else who is or was active in the Nightmare community. And that's the whole issue. The spec is very easy and still does decent damage. In my first few weeks I acquired 330 equipment and was able to out-DPS experienced players in full BiS in Brontes NiM and Revan Core challenges on Pyro and other classes without much effort. The spec is not doing too much damage overall. it does to much damage compared to how easy it is to play. That's also the reason Arsenal is at the bottom. It's just 12345 without much thinking. Obviously, difficulty in play the spec is always open for everyone's own interpretation. But what's more important is, that this is not what the Developers are saying. If they would say: "AP, as a spec, enjoys great mobility and unnatural range as a melee DPS. It excels in important raid challenges and is comparatively easy to learn and to play. For this reason we nerf the DPS by x% (our estimates)". I would be more satisfied with the explanation. I would still disagree, because after this nerf, Pyrotech will be able to do everything AP can, but better. And that is the issue between nerfing a class and making it irrelevant.

Can't say, came back only recently when my old group had already cleared the operation. The difficulty of the bosses should increase with the bosses. Right now, bosses 1 and 4 are hardest. Boss 2 feels like a normal hardmode boss, while Boss 3 feels like a hardmode final boss. This deals both, with boss mechanics and DPS/Heal checks. Obviously, no operation follows this idea completely, but almost all first bosses are somewhat easy compared to the rest - I'm thinking Nefra and Dash'rood here for example. Watchdog would for example be balanced perfectly fine as a first boss. Hazardous Gear seems better for tanks these days, as Endurance isn't as useful as it was in previous versions of the game. You gain more from defense stat these days. Hence, I'm upgrading the blue stuff up to 340. One thing I have to admit is, that I usually upgrade one piece in one go once I farm five blue tokens, in order to save money and time to augment them every step of the way. Blue Tokens are also helpful to get different main- and offhands for different classes, increasing variety and offering options to play other classes, while being carried by the equipment. Gear Rating > Cosmetics. It'll still be some time until I have nothing but cosmetics to buy from those tokens. If you want to make cosmetics gathered from operations interesting, have those items be chance drops and have a visual distinction between the Gear - similar to the Gear dropped in Dread Fortress and Dread Palace, where Veteran Mode Gear looks similar to the Master Mod Gear, but the Master Mode Gear is glowing. I have never seen the mount. However, I'd prefer Mounts to be dropped in similar fashion as in old operations - safe or (good!) chance drop at the final boss. Make it a safe drop for Master Mode and a (low) chance drop for Veteran Mode, if you really want it. Why? In my group, we had Loot- and Title-Wishlists in the past - get a Helix Hyperpod on that character or Gate Crasher on this character. It's really tiresome to kill Kanoth 50 times to get one of those items. Everyone in your group? Do the math. You're going to be in there a while. Aside from that, I like the operation. Feels like a mix between 3.0 operations and gods. I liked both.

We have to admit the truth here: Balancing of Operations and classes has been all over the place for years. Even within 7.x, we saw (initially) an operations buff, with 330 max gear. Then we got 340 max gear, an all (except new) Operations got a nerf in Damage they do and HP they have. I'm a Tank Main, so DPSing is usually not a strong feat of mine, but that allows me to sit back and see our DPS figure out the mess that was created. But on occasion, I played DPS when tanking became too boring. I obviously played IO Merc in late 3.x and 4.x, before it got nerfed. I changed to AP Powertech and could pretty much always fall back on that in case my damage wasn't sufficient. A while ago i stopped playing and when I came back a few weeks ago, I wanted to pull my Merc out of the box. After the first few raids, I looked at the numbers and decided to take out the PT again. AP is doing alright. Not great, not terrible - still good enough to Out-DPS people with much better Gear in the Revan Core-Challenge. But it's about to get nerfed. Pyro is about to get nerfed as well. As soon as I was looking into Hatred, someone told me that there's a nerf incoming as well (understably - you just have to smash the keyboard and you're doing more damage than some other specs with perfect rotations). Guess I'm taking out the Marauder again. Annihilation is not that hard to play. However, over the years I've always loosely played other classes - Marauder, Sniper, Sin. Not well, but I know what buttons to press to do damage. Especially during the long wait between ToS/Ravagers and Gods there was enough time to level many characters, try them out in Raids and kill the "hardest" content. Playing only one class, only one character for all those years would've been really boring. Those players that were one-trick-wonders left when the nerf-hammer hit their classes. So if you want to play this game, you have to adapt, with one exception. You can play Marauder. I can't remember a time when Maros were at the bottom of the DPS-chain. Great Raid utility, strongest Raid-buff and sufficient damage for everything. Sometimes a bit awkward to play (thinking Brontes-burn here), but in most cases they're doing fine. And on the few bosses, where you need more range DPS (some Denova NiM 1st boss strategies for example), you can always play an easy range DPS-class. Virulence might not be the greatest spec right now, but it's doing the job. To get back to the original quote: No, it is not intended that you can kill every boss with every possible combination of classes and specs. You really don't wanna play an add-heavy boss encounter with 4 Concealment-Saboteurs. And playing Torque with 4 Engineering Snipers could also lead to some untimely Tank-deaths. Some classes just bring certain utility (Sin-Tanks taking spheres at Brontes' in the final phase for example), some bosses require a certain raid-coordination, some bosses have mechanics where adds need to die fast or have low HP and are far away. Some boss encounters require the use of kicks (Styrak, Revan...). And a final thought on class balancing: There are classes that have a steep learning curve in order to do decent DPS, and those that have a very flat learning curve. Wouldn't it be fair and rewarding, that those classes that are hard to play and hard to learn do the most DPS? AP PT or Arsenal Merc are really easy to play. On an immobile target, where you can stand still the entire time, they should, in my opinion do less damage than, let's say, Annihilation. Annihilation will run into DPS-losses if it has to target switch, while AP and Arsenal can switch without problems. So the goal of the balance-team should be to balance this out correctly. Really good Annihilation players will now find ways to reduce DPS-losses when target switching. But that requires skill. Putting more work into your class should always be rewarding. So, difficult classes should go to the top if played perfectly. 12345 classes should hit a limit below that. I agree with the quoted statement insofar, that every class should, with progress Gear (meaning: What you can have, at maximum, when you first enter a certain Operation) and a certain level of expertise in front of the computer screen, do sufficient single target DPS in order to beat the hard enrage (or any other damage-check) of any given boss fight. We shouldn't mix situational utility (raid buffs, DCD's...) into a discussion about damage-balancing in my opinion. If you want to be a good DPS, you have to go with the times, Stagnation leads to regression. Those that only play one class, don't play for long.

It's even a good way for solo players. Took me around 15 minutes to stealth through red reaper without a group, just with my companion. Boss 2 is an ***, though, since it oneshots my companion every now and then even with low stacks. Speaking of gearing, I was 306 after the first 3 1/2 hours of Red Reaper. It's still helpful for getting easy tech fragments (around 600 per run, more if q-synced with 4 ppl) as well as inlays. I have about 4 sets of inlays sitting around in my legacy cargo waiting to get into proper set bonuses. All in all, it's not as annoying as I suspected it to be when I was on PTS. And since set bonuses will take a while to grind. the speed is okay from my point of view. And since I strongly suspect a new level of gear being introduced next year, the grind will go on. Let's at least hope the content then lasts longer than the content we have now.

I'm repeating myself, but I have to say it again: Bring back Phasewalk for Sins and Shadows! I'm sure that would increase their value in pvp and would add some nice additional mobility to them in PvE.

I switched to Guardian Tank right after discovering this nerf. Not because I felt sins to be bad now, but because I played Sin/Shadow for years now, since they were so much more powerful than the other tank-classes. It'll be interesting to first progress through the gear grinding with a guardian now. In general, I'd now like to have phase walk back for sins. I always found that removing it from sins and shadows was a mistake. Force speed was just broken, but phase walk was a nice mobility skill. #bringbackphasewalkforsins And, on another note, rewrite phasing phantasm, so that we get our big, healing increasing phase walk back please! Let force speed be a mobility skill only. No need to attach force regen or damage reduction to it.

The issue with gearing is essentially caused by the removal of expertise. PvP'ers want (or need?) their gear quickly, while raiders want (or need?) it by progressing through an operation. You can't have both if you need the same gear for both types of activity, otherwise, PvE'ers could cross gear themselves by afkfarming PvP. It even happened in 4.0 with the 208 pvp-equipment, despite 224 gear being obtained ridiculously easy due to highlighted ops. So, what we need in my opinion is, to remove any gear requirements for pvp. Give all classes a stat pool and the option to weigh their stats as they desire. Now, add a vendor that contains all empty set bonus shells and sell them for tech fragments/unassembled components/commendations or whatever you want to call them. Reasonable prices please.Those tokens drop everywhere in, of course, sufficiently balance numbers. We don't want Fractured Grinding, nor should anyone else have a significant advantage in comparison to the level of difficulty. Then, let normal gear without set bonuses but with inlays drop in all PvE-content, depending on the difficulty. We don't need 40 different levels. SM/Vet/MM tier is sufficient. Now, you can balance all content to drop all pieces by different probabilities. Obviously, Hammer Station SM has a very small probability of dropping the Master Mode tier Mainhand, but even then, some lucky drops make players very happy. Izax MM on the other hand gets a safe drop of such mainhand or chest piece. In terms of crafting, just go back to 4.0. Only pieces to levels below the max level can be crafted. So, we have for example 290, 300 and 306 as dropping gear. Now, 288, 298 and 304 can be crafted. Purple Materials can be bought from vendors with our tokens and they are dropping from all content as well. No need to die into ranked pvp to get crafting materials please. So, basically: Make it simple for those, who just want to get something that gets them through veteran mode flashpoints but offer everyone to dig deeper into it by optimizing set bonuses and mods.

I have to add, as a NIM raider, the past few months have been surprisingly profitable. Each member of my group made about 3bn Credits by just doing what we wanted to do either way - farming titles in Gods. The initial price for Queen-materials was also satisfying. However, if crafting in general is getting more difficult, players like me, who rather sell crafting materials dropping in the content I do is also getting worse, so I'd support the issue stated in this thread. I haven't looked into augment-crafting, but I hope it's viable for someone like me who is just logging into the game for raids.

I normally don't engage with quitter talk, but as long as new raids are coming, I will stay with swtor. However, if they ever pull a 4.0 again, I'm probably gone.

Jedi Academy had it from the start. Jedi Outcast had a code that you could enter to enable it. I don't know about the earlier Jedi Knight games.

If you come across a level 306 gold armor penetration amplifier, you might think about saving it, even if you don't need it right now, because of this very reason. Just buy another armoring that doesn't come with a gold amplifier out of the box and reroll on that one.

-Deleted because of wrong thread-

Shadows/Assassins have access to a tactical (don't remember the name, PTS is offline, can't check) that grants you two charges for force cloak. However, you can unequip and reequip yourself with this tactical when you're out of combat - so, you can use force cloak, drop the tactical, equip it again and then you again get two charges for force cloak. That results in you being able to cloak as often as you like, as long as you reequip the tactical in question every time you stealth. And since you can pull an equipment piece into your quickbar and can equip it by just pressing the keybind in the quickbar, it just takes two clicks to reset the force cloak cooldown. So, either we need a lock for equipment changes when a boss fight is running or you're in a pvp match (similar to locking the skilltree) or the tactical needs to be reworked. If you want to rework it, I think the best way to change it would be to have it grant two charges on resilience/shroud or battle readiness/overcharge saber instead of force cloak.

As a shadow main tank, I find the combination offered interesting. However, there are several other set bonuses that are, in my opinion, more valuable. Set bonuses offer the option to gain a damage reduction buff by using spinning kick (1) or by using force wave (2). Due to the short cooldown of those abilities, you can get roughly 30% uptime on those buffs, making it effectively another battle readiness. Speaking of battle readiness, I also like one of the DPS set bonuses, that reduce the cooldown of battle readiness by 20 seconds on the four-piece bonus and resets the duration when an enemy is killed on the 6 piece bonus. These three bonuses are in my opinion all more powerful than the one mentioned in the article, hence I am currently running the one I mentioned last to test if I can utilize the 6-piece-bonus in a good way. The other tank in my raiding team is currently favoring the spinning kick-bonus, for the reason that it is easier to use, since, in large add groups, using force wave might cause the DPS start whining about the adds being pushed away in every direction. For tacticals, the one mentioned seems to be the one with the most diverse options to use. However, I also tend to like the one extending the duration of resilence by consuming dark ward stacks and the one applying resilience to the guarded ally. Nevertheless, I'd like to mention that I want to get my phase walk back. It's just not fair that gunslingers and sages are having one while shadows lost their due to some PvP'ers complaining.

I read some of the posts in this thread, including the initial one. Honestly, if you guys are all thinking that Zwirni is talking about you when he mentions 'toxicity' in his post, he might've hit some true points. Regarding Zwirnis suggestion that groups that cleared bosses early on had to offer help in form of tutorials, I have to admit that I am very low on free time since GftM NiM was released and barely had time to lead my group at all. Writing or recording guides in addition to that was not possible for me. Nevertheless, we of course helped everyone who asked us for help. In certain parts, I agree with Zwirni on the increasing toxicity in the raiding community. However, if you are streaming your raids publicly with such self-proclaimed high standards it's largely your own fault for attracting those sorts of viewers and comments. I'd suggest to just play your game with the people you like and stop giving a s*** about what other people say. Regarding certain groups "claiming" certain strategies as their own, I honestly have to disagree. There is just a limited number of ways to execute certain mechanics. And, I can just speak for me, the strategy we are playing is always "our strategy". It is not in any way diminishing the work other groups are putting into it, it is just an expression about what we found working best for us. For example: For Nahut, we are using taunts by the tank who is having the boss to provoke the red energy wave before the other tank taunts, so that our DPS don't have to play this mechanic. It was a rather unique strategy on Tulak Hord for quite some time, however, I recently learned that the strategy is also in use by several groups on Darth Malgus. I don't know - and i honestly don't care who first invented it. For us, it's the strategy we are using, so tt's "our strategy". So, all in all, I agree in certain points Zwirni made and I disagree in others. Either way, you all have to calm down a little bit. Congratulations on all your GftM-achievements. It's, after all, just the work you were willing to put in - and noone should be blamed for not having as much time for swtor as others do. It's, after all, a game.

Of course! Forgot to put it into the post.

Finally, after we tightening up our group roster down from 12 to 8 people, we cleared the Time Run today in the 5th attempt this week. Thanks to everyone! Infinitas Team Gold - Tulak Hord - Pubside 07/22/2019 9:25:59 PM GMT+2 Short reminder: We're normally a pubside group, but the last lockout today was on imperial side.